Adopting a post-structuralist approach in analyzing the Euromosaic data about European minority language groups, Glyn Williams argues that different states construct minority language groups and speakers in different ways. This leads to an argument about the nature of democracy and how the current changes in governmental discourses accommodate linguistic and cultural diversity.
In the last three decades the field of endangered and minority languages has evolved rapidly, moving from the initial dire warnings of linguists to a swift increase in the number of organizations, funding programs, and community-based efforts dedicated to documentation, maintenance, and revitalization. Sustaining Linguistic Diversity brings together cutting-edge theoretical and empirical work from leading researchers and practitioners in the field. Together, these contributions provide a state-of-the-art overview of current work in defining, documenting, and developing the world's smaller languages and language varieties. The book begins by grappling with how we define endangerment—how languages and language varieties are best classified, what the implications of such classifications are, and who should have the final say in making them. The contributors then turn to the documentation and description of endangered languages and focus on best practices, methods and goals in documentation, and on current field reports from around the globe. The latter part of the book analyzes current practices in developing endangered languages and dialects and particular language revitalization efforts and outcomes in specific locations. Concluding with critical calls from leading researchers in the field to consider the human lives at stake, Sustaining Linguistic Diversity reminds scholars, researchers, practitioners, and educators that linguistic diversity can only be sustained in a world where diversity in all its forms is valued.
This book examines the ways in which our ideas about language and identity which used to be framed in national and political terms as a matter of rights and citizenship are increasingly recast in economic terms as a matter of added value. It argues that this discursive shift is connected to specific characteristics of the globalized new economy in what can be thought of as "late capitalism". Through ten ethnographic case studies, it demonstrates the complex ways in which older nationalist ideologies which invest language with value as a source of pride get bound up with newer neoliberal ideologies which invest language with value as a source of profit. The complex interaction between these modes of mobilizing linguistic resources challenges some of our ideas about globalization, hinting that we are in a period of intensification of modernity, in which the limits of the nation-State are stretched, but not (yet) undone. At the same time, this book argues, this intensification also calls into question modernist ways of looking at language and identity, requiring a more serious engagement with capitalism and how it constitutes symbolic (including linguistic) as well as material markets.
The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism provides a comprehensive survey of the field of multilingualism for a global readership, and an overview of the research which situates multilingualism in its social, cultural and political context. The handbook includes an introduction and five sections with thirty two chapters by leading international contributors. The introduction charts the changing landscape of social and ethnographic research on multilingualism (theory, methods and research sites) and it foregrounds key contemporary debates. Chapters are structured around sub-headings such as: early developments, key issues related to theory and method, new research directions. This handbook offers an authoritative guide to shifts over time in thinking about multilingualism as well as providing an overview of the range of contemporary themes, debates and research sites. The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism is the ideal resource for postgraduate students of multilingualism, as well as those studying education and anthropology.
This book addresses the importance of language in matters of sustainability and incorporating such concerns in implementing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable language policy must aim to include all groups, including language minorities and marginalized populations, such as refugees and aid recipients, in conditions that allow for their inclusion in making and implementing policy. The book brings together nine studies covering such topics as language and digital resources, sustainable and inclusive multilingual education, national language policy, and language in peacekeeping operations. A final chapter addresses the crucial intersection between sociolinguistics and economics, and the implications of this for development and the SDGs.
Following the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, Croatian was declared to be a separate language, distinct from Serbian, and linguistic issues became highly politicized. This book examines the changing status and norms of the Croatian language and its relationship to Croatian national identity, focusing on the period after Croatian independence.
An exploration of the role of language attitudes and ideologies in predicting the survival prospects of a minority language. The author examines this role through a cross-national comparative analysis of Irish in the Republic of Ireland and Galician in the Autonomous Community of Galicia in north-west Spain.
The author presents a new approach to the study of language policy, by focusing on language policy formation and implementation as a dynamic, conflict-laden process involving the interaction of various actors with different motivations and uneven bargaining powers, rather than as a product , examinable post hoc from existing language legislation.
What role does linguistic diversity play in European democratic and legal processes? Is it an obstacle to deliberative democracy and a hindrance to legal certainty, or a cultural and economic asset and a prerequisite for the free movement of citizens? This book examines the tensions and contradictions of European language laws and policy from a multi-disciplinary perspective. With contributions from leading researchers in EU law and legal theory, political science, sociology, sociolinguistic and cognitive linguistics, it combines mutually exclusive and competing perspectives of linguistic diversity. The work will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers in the areas of European law, legal theory and linguistics.
